Sunday, June 12, 2011

One day I will look back on all of this and laugh, right?

I wish I could convey how completed freaked out I am about homeschooling high school. It's gone completely beyond the "Oh, here goes Niffercoo flipping out about education plans again - must be June" to "I think Niffercoo might seriously be having a break down about high school."

I think it all came to a climax yesterday when I threw myself face-down onto the bed and started to sob. My poor husband just patted me on the back.

The "plan" that I came up with last week (and proudly announced on Facebook) is simply not doable with the the number of children I have who need individual instruction. Austin is actually going to need MORE of my attention this year, especially at the beginning of the year. I'm sad to say that I have really not required as much from him as I should have in the last few years. This past year was better, but my expectations for output (oral or written) have been lax. I'm seeing the results of this poor execution now. So we have some back-tracking to do to make sure some skills are in place. He despises oral narration because his expressive language delays make it hard to get OUT what is inside his head, and it's frustrating for him. Because I don't like to see him frustrated, I haven't worked enough in the ZPD (getting him to the edge of his competency where LEARNING takes place) - and this has been a mistake. I can see myself doing this same thing with Reece already, so as usual, she will benefit from my mistakes with her brother! ;) I will be requiring much more in the way of narration from ALL of the kids this coming school year.

I'm going to regroup this week and think in terms of the practical - what can I manage to do, and do it well. I do think we'll be returning to the Ancients for our history and literature, even though I really don't want to. I feel like we've "been there, done that" because we started and stopped ancients so much, but I don't think the kids will feel that way. In fact, Reece was only 6 when we did ancients last (and we flew through it, only spending half a year on all of ancient history), so I'm not sure she remembers much at all (aside from the stuff she's picked up from Percy Jackson and the Kane Chronicles! LOL).

1 comment:

I will say one thing about Percy Jackson: a kid in my VBS knew all about ancient gods because of it and it helped serve our conversation about the "the God of the Bible" and why just saying "god" isn't clear enough.